The Victorian Water and Climate Initiative (VicWaCI) aims to understand our climate and water resources better. The research program focuses on sharing this knowledge with the water sector to make a real difference for application.

Key findings

Section 2

  • The role of natural variability and climate change in cool-season rainfall declines since 1997 and the prospects for future cool-season rainfall (Section 2.2).
  • How changes in global circulation have increased the frequency of high-pressure systems (Section 2.4 and Section 2.5).
    • How these changes have reduced the frequency of low-pressure systems across Victoria.
  • How different weather systems contribute to rainfall across Victoria (Section 2.6).
    • How this changes by season.
    • Observed trends in these weather systems over time.
  • How much sub-daily rainfall intensities have increased across some parts of Victoria (Section 2.7).

Section 3

  • Which catchments across Victoria had a significant shift in rainfall–runoff response during the Millennium Drought (Section 3.3).
  • Which of these catchments are still experiencing this shift since the end of the drought.
  • Classifications of catchment response to droughts based on the timing of the change in runoff response and recovery, which may be useful to predict future runoff response (Section 3.3.3).
  • Possible causes of the change in runoff response during the Millennium Drought (Section 3.4).
  • Catchment runoff response can recover after drought before the cumulative rainfall deficit recovers (Section 3.4.4).
  • Possible causes of the change in the size of reductions in runoff response during the Millennium Drought (Section 3.5).

Section 4

  • Challenges in robustly bias-correcting dynamically downscaled rainfall for hydrological applications of high-resolution rainfall projections to project runoff (Section 4.2.1 and Section 4.2.2).
  • How different climate and runoff projections compare and methods for developing improved runoff projections (Section 4.2.3).

Victoria’s water in a changing climate

Page last updated: 08/09/23